The Hunger Games: Fortune's Favoured
by BDasher
Summary: The story of a man who should not be. A refugee, both hunter and hunted with nothing left to lose risks all in a fight to overthrow a country.


_Chapter 1: A Mission Failed_

_I don't want __to be here__. _I pull my cloak tighter around myself. _Should've stayed home. _Of course, if I'd done that, the Peacekeepers would have found me. And then, they'd have killed me. Even so, I wonder if life is still worth living. They've already killed my girlfriend. They've sent my little sis to die in the Hunger Games alongside me. _Like they're sending yet twenty-three more kids to their deaths this year_. I clench my fists; I want to _do_ something. To _stop_ this senseless, annual massacre from happening. But no, I decide. Killing off a couple of Peacekeepers now would do more harm than good. I've killed more than my fair share of Capitol swines during my escape from the Hunger Games six years ago.

I was a seventeen year old kid back then, son of the owners of a butcher's shop. I was very lucky; I spent my youth in the middle class, a privilege ninety percent of District 12 would have killed for. I wasn't very rich back then, but I didn't have to worry about starving either. That hadn't kept me from going into the woods, armed with nothing but two large butcher's knives and several smaller ones for throwing.

At first, I didn't stray far away from the fence, practicing my throws on nearby trees. Once I stsrted to feel confident about my abilities, I ventured farther into the forest, using my honed skills to kill squirrels and bunnies for my father's shop. I never told him about it, I just placed them in his meat stockpile.

That's when I'd first met the girl and the boy.

It was about a week after my first kill. I was silently scouring the forest for prey, hoping to find a rabbit or two, when I heard the noise of dry leaves being stepped on. I grabbed a throwing knife and hid in a nearby bush, waiting for my prey to show up. Instead of a bunny or even a board, I found a girl. I was surprised to find someone else outside of District 12's borders, yet remained hidden. She could've easily been a spy, stalking the woods for poachers. Even if she was a hunter herself, instinct and common sense had told me this girl would probably be dead in a year or so, and I didn't feel like making, and subsequently losing, another friend. I've had enough of that in my lifetime. I would have probably kept on avoiding her if not for the boy.

I'd spotted him a couple of weeks later, fishing in a lake. About fifteen minutes before that, I had ran into the girl about thrirty metres away, resting underneath a nearby tree. I wasn't sure why I did what I did – I'm still not sure now – but I decided to pair these two up. I'd grown fond of the girl in the past weeks, following her around occasionally, seeing how she provided for her family. I perhaps wanted her to have someone to watch her back. Not me, I'd already grown too close to her for my liking, but one that could help her.

So, I picked up a bunch of pebbles and threw one into the bushes nearby, staying low. The boy spun around and grabbed a knife. I threw another one, this time a bit farther away. The boy slowly crept towards the bushes, warily eyeing them. I threw one even farther, luring him closer to the girl. Then, taking a risk, I snuck forward and threw one against the tree the girl was resting on. It riocheted, hitting her square in the face. She jumped up, arrow nocked and drawn, a bunch of rabbits lying next to her.

"Ouch! What the... who are you? And what are you doing here?" she had said to the boy.

"I can ask you the same. And did you get those rabbits out of my snares?"

I withdrew, leaving the two. I had regularily checked up on them afterwards, making sure they were doing okay.

Until, of course, the Hunger Games had torn me and my sister out of our lives. I shiver, remembering that afwul Reaping and the Games following them. My sister was killed, murdered by one of our fellow Tributes. I had thrown a knife in his throat, making him bleed to death. Anger had seethed through me, and I did something terribly stupid. I resisted the Capitol. I still regret that. It still was vague, even more so after six years of trying to forget. Backign off from the corpses, racing to the clamp that took my sister, boarding the hovercraft, murdering its crew and fleeing the arena with at least fifty Capitol hovercrafts following me. Luckily, there had been a bloodbath going on somewhere else. If it had been livestreamed, I would have caused the murder of the entire District. At least. I vaguely remember crashing somewhere in a forest, cutting open my arm to remove the chip and dashing off, living of the wildlife and hiding from the hovercrafts. It had taken me two years to get back to District first, I worried someone would have recognized me, but thankfully, I had been to ugly for the Hunger Games and had undergone several drastic plastical surgeries. My once-brown hair was now a golden blonde, long and uncared for thanks to two years spent in the wilderness. My once-bearded chin now was devoid of hair. Even my nose wasn't the same; it was much thinner now, and the crookness from breaking it once had been fixed too. The only thing that had not been changed were my eyes, with a deep green colour. Mom always told me they looked like the first leaves of a young tree in spring. Of course, she, along with all of other my relatives and friends had suffered unfortunate 'accidents.' Those Capitol pigs had even arranged a mine explosion to get rid of my cousin. I had, obviously, been removed from existence. I grin. Being dead had its advantages. I lived in an abandoned house, although I spent the majority of my time in the woods. I shake my head and return to the now. The Capitol woman finished her speech and put her hand in the bowl of names. _I wonder which poor children get sent to his doom this year?_ The woman takes a paper and reads the name on it out loud.

"Primrose Everdeen." I hear many men in the crowd groan. Apparently, this Primrose is pretty popular in 12. I shrug. The only two living people I care about are-

"I volunteer! I volunteer as a tribute!" someone yells. I gasp. I know that voice. The girl from the woods.

The person who's closest to being a friend for me has just signed her own death sentence.


End file.
